Mark A. McCarthy, a.k.a. DJ GOTEK, was born in San Francisco, CA, and grew up in the Bay Area, but relocated to the Great Northwest for university and career later in life. He has lived in both Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, where he currently resides. Music has been Mark’s primary passion from an early age, especially the many genres of dance electronica, namely EDM, EBM, Synthpop, and Industrial. His interest in synthetic music really was cemented at a young age in the 80’s NewWave movement and this evolved through the 90’s with the Industrial/EBM-Synthpop scene, Techno, and early Trance. But it wasn’t until the mid-90’s that when he began listening to DJ’s like Paul Oakenfold, Paul van Dyk, Tiesto, & Armin van Buuren, coupled with the Trance/Rave scene exploding in Europe that really inspired his interest in the DJ sub-culture. During this time Mark developed a deep addiction to Trance which really shaped his musical interest and direction for the next decade. Mark first began to compile and create mixes on his computer under the DJ alias “DJMARKO” and gained some notoriety with a few Trance mixes that quickly spread around the world on Internet radio stations like DI.FM and were aired on live radio in LA and in the NW. Mark’s relentless desire to DJ live in clubs and in front of a crowd on a dance floor drove him to start buying DJ equipment and getting some formal training and it wasn’t long after that he landed several years’ worth of DJ residencies in Portland. Life and work eventually took Mark to Seattle where he has now resided for over a year. Soon afterwards Mark rebranded himself and the DJMARKO alias was shed, and “GOTEK” became Mark’s officially registered alias on www.theDJlist.com. Moving forward DJ GOTEK’s sound has evolved after being influenced by the Seattle club scene, Progressive House labels like Anjunadeep & Ultra, and through osmosis from some of his more iconic DJ friends and peers in the Seattle underground circuit like Johnny Monsoon, Chris Paape, Andrew Cox, Jason LeMeitre, & Travis Colvin ~ to a Progressive House influenced sound with elements of Techno, Tech House, Progressive Trance, and Deep House. DJ GOTEK’s dream is simply to inspire and move people with his passion and what he loves best; MUSIC! =)